AI APIs & libraries

39 tools for building robots with AI — the big providers and the smaller open-source projects worth knowing. Links go to each project's official site or repository.

OpenAI API

OpenAI

Hosted API

GPT models for reasoning, vision and tool calling; often used for task planning and language-conditioned control.

Model APIllmvisionplanning
License: CommercialDocsVisit

Anthropic API

Anthropic

Hosted API

Claude models with long context and tool use, useful for agentic robot planning and code generation.

Model APIllmagents
License: CommercialDocsVisit

Gemini API

Google

Hosted API

Multimodal models with native video and image understanding; Gemini Robotics builds on this family.

Model APImultimodalvideo
License: CommercialDocsVisit

Mistral API

Mistral AI

Hosted API

European LLM provider; several models also ship as open weights you can run on-robot.

Model APIllmopen weights
License: Commercial / Apache-2.0 weightsDocsVisit

Groq

Groq

Hosted API

Very low-latency inference for open models, handy when a robot loop can't wait on slow responses.

Model APIlatencyinference
License: CommercialDocsVisit

Together AI

Together

Hosted API

Hosted inference and fine-tuning for many open-weight models.

Model APIfine-tuningopen models
License: CommercialDocsVisit

Replicate

Replicate

Hosted API

Run community-published models (vision, segmentation, depth) through a simple API.

Model APIvisioncommunity models
License: CommercialDocsVisit

Hugging Face Inference

Hugging Face

Hosted API

Call thousands of Hub models, including robotics policies, without hosting them yourself.

Model APIhubinference
License: CommercialDocsVisit

Ollama

Ollama

Open source

Run LLMs and VLMs locally on a workstation or Jetson with an OpenAI-style API.

Model APIlocaledge
License: MITDocsVisit

LeRobot

Hugging Face

Open source

PyTorch library and dataset format for imitation learning on real robots (ACT, Diffusion Policy, pi0).

Robot learning libraryimitation learningdatasets
License: Apache-2.0DocsVisit

OpenVLA

Stanford / TRI

Open weights

7B open vision-language-action model and fine-tuning code trained on Open X-Embodiment.

Robot learning libraryvlafine-tuning
License: MITVisit

Octo

UC Berkeley

Open weights

Generalist transformer policy, small enough to fine-tune on a single GPU.

Robot learning librarygeneralist policy
License: MITVisit

openpi

Physical Intelligence

Open weights

Open release of the pi0 / pi0-FAST flow-matching VLA models with training code.

Robot learning libraryvlaflow matching
License: Apache-2.0Visit

Diffusion Policy

Columbia / TRI

Open source

Reference implementation of visuomotor policies trained as diffusion models.

Robot learning librarydiffusionvisuomotor
License: MITVisit

robomimic

Stanford / NVIDIA

Open source

Framework and benchmark for learning from human demonstrations.

Robot learning libraryoffline learningbenchmark
License: MITVisit

Stable-Baselines3

DLR-RM

Open source

Reliable PyTorch implementations of RL algorithms (PPO, SAC, TD3).

Robot learning libraryreinforcement learning
License: MITVisit

skrl

Toni-SM

Open source

Modular RL library with first-class support for Isaac Lab massively parallel envs.

Robot learning libraryreinforcement learningisaac
License: MITVisit

rsl_rl

ETH Zurich RSL

Open source

Fast GPU PPO used for legged locomotion training.

Robot learning librarylocomotionrl
License: BSD-3-ClauseVisit

Isaac Lab

NVIDIA

Open source

GPU-parallel robot learning framework on Isaac Sim.

Simulationgpu simrl
License: BSD-3-ClauseDocsVisit

MuJoCo

Google DeepMind

Open source

Fast, accurate physics engine; MJX runs it on GPU/TPU via JAX.

Simulationphysicsjax
License: Apache-2.0DocsVisit

Genesis

Genesis Embodied AI

Open source

Python-native multi-physics simulator aimed at very fast robot learning.

Simulationphysicspython
License: Apache-2.0Visit

ManiSkill

UC San Diego (Hillbot)

Open source

GPU-parallel manipulation benchmark with rendering for vision policies.

Simulationmanipulationbenchmark
License: Apache-2.0Visit

PyBullet

Erwin Coumans

Open source

Lightweight, easy-to-install physics sim; good for prototyping.

Simulationphysicsprototyping
License: ZlibVisit

Gazebo

Open Robotics

Open source

ROS-integrated simulator for full robot systems and sensors.

Simulationrossensors
License: Apache-2.0Visit

RoboCasa

UT Austin

Open source

Large-scale simulated kitchens for household manipulation tasks.

Simulationhouseholdmanipulation
License: MITVisit

Segment Anything (SAM 2)

Meta

Open weights

Promptable image and video segmentation.

Perceptionsegmentationvideo
License: Apache-2.0Visit

Grounding DINO

IDEA Research

Open weights

Open-vocabulary object detection from text prompts.

Perceptiondetectionopen vocabulary
License: Apache-2.0Visit

Ultralytics YOLO

Ultralytics

Open source

Real-time detection, segmentation and pose that runs on edge devices.

Perceptiondetectionedge
License: AGPL-3.0Visit

Depth Anything V2

HKU / TikTok

Open weights

Monocular depth estimation from a single RGB camera.

Perceptiondepth
License: Apache-2.0 (small)Visit

FoundationPose

NVIDIA

Open source

6D pose estimation and tracking of novel objects.

Perceptionposegrasping
License: NVIDIA Source Code LicenseVisit

Open3D

Intel ISL

Open source

Point cloud and 3D data processing library.

Perceptionpoint cloud3d
License: MITVisit

ROS 2

Open Robotics

Open source

Standard robot software framework for messaging, drivers and tooling.

Robotics middlewarerosdrivers
License: Apache-2.0Visit

MoveIt 2

PickNik

Open source

Motion planning, kinematics and collision checking for arms.

Robotics middlewaremotion planning
License: BSD-3-ClauseVisit

dora-rs

dora-rs

Open source

Low-latency dataflow middleware designed for AI-driven robots.

Robotics middlewaredataflowrust
License: Apache-2.0Visit

Pinocchio

LAAS-CNRS / INRIA

Open source

Fast rigid-body dynamics and kinematics.

Robotics middlewaredynamicskinematics
License: BSD-2-ClauseVisit

Rerun

Rerun

Open source

Log and visualize multimodal robot data (images, point clouds, poses) over time.

Data toolingvisualizationlogging
License: MIT / Apache-2.0DocsVisit

Foxglove

Foxglove

Hosted API

Visualization and data management for ROS bags and MCAP recordings.

Data toolingvisualizationmcap
License: Commercial / MCAP MITVisit

RLDS

Google

Open source

Episode dataset format behind Open X-Embodiment.

Data toolingdataset format
License: Apache-2.0Visit

Weights & Biases

W&B

Hosted API

Experiment tracking and model evaluation for training runs.

Data toolingexperiments
License: CommercialDocsVisit